August 24. Hikeathon Day 4. Paths Up the Mountain.

Friday, August 24. Hikeathon Day 3. Paths Up the Mountain, Approximately 18 miles, 3730 ft ascent.

Paths Up the Mountain: from Cascade Lake day use area, Cold Spring Trail up, then down via Little Summit to Mountain Lake, then over to Twin Lakes and back up to the top, then down the road (with detour to Mountain Lake) to Cascade Falls, then trail back to Cascade Lake.

Dear Trail Friends,

I love the way this hikeathon somehow makes me more curious and adventuresome as I walk the familiar paths. For example, on the trail up Mt Constitution via Cold Springs, which I have hiked hundreds and hundreds of times, I have always vaguely known there was an old mine nearby. Earlier this year, in fact, I passed a scout troup on the trail as they prepared to visit the mine. But I have never gone there. So today of course I had to go. I left my backpack on the trail and I climbed a very steep and somewhat scary trail up to the mine (only to discover when I came out an alternative trail that was quite passable), then entered the cavelike opening. I turned on my iphone light and walked quite a way before I turned back. I found myself very curious to learn the history of the mine - What was mined there? When was it built and by whom and how? Who worked there? When was it closed and why?

Photo 1 is the view from the mine as I am walking back out. I thought you would get a kick out of walking into the darkness with me, and then back out into the light.

When I decided to make one of the hikeathon days include all the paths that lead to the top of the mountain, I was not thinking about my grandfather. But when I began last night to anticipate today's hike, I could not help thinking of him. My wonderful grandfather, HL Nunn, the great hero of my childhood, was a factory president (Nunn-Bush shoes) who became a passionate advocate for workers, and also a vegetarian.

One year when I was around 8 (so early 1950s), HL attended a world vegetarian conference and brought me home the catalogue. I can still picture the cover, a photo of brilliantly colorful fruits and vegetables. I read the whole fat catalogue. One essay moved me deeply, I believe it was by a Hindu.

The essay said that there are many paths up the mountain, and they all lead to the same place. But if you stand at the bottom arguing that no path is better than any other, and so you refuse to pick a path, and to walk it, you will never climb the mountain. That view of things contrasted wildly with the dogma I encountered as a teenager when my mother married a Catholic and I attended Catholic school and eventually (though briefly) converted to Catholicism. But in an odd and very special way, the essay also blessed my conversion, even as it placed it in a larger context.

So as I walked up the mountain today, I thought about how in those days I thought I knew what the top of the mountain was. It was God/heaven, or nirvana, or enlightenment. But as I walked today I wasn't so sure. Maybe it was love - I've thought of the purpose of my life as learning to love. But maybe, I thought to myself, it was kindness. Love is a matter of grace - its something given, not willed. But kindness is something one can do, like putting one foot in front of the other, no matter how tired and weak I might be feeling.

And as a matter of fact, I was feeling weak and tired. It finally occurred to me that even though the air was much cleaner than before and there was no formal health alert at the website, that I was having trouble. So I put on my mask, and instantly began to feel better. I wore it for the entire hike.

Photo 2 is a view of Summit Lake early in the morning on my way up to the top for the first time. I took the little side trail to Summit Lake - which I have only done once before - because I really felt I had left it out on my "Water Ways" day. And I noticed a new appreciation for both water and lakes. There was something about having spent the whole day in their company, noticing them, that changed my relationship with them and made it fresher. It was as if we had gotten married and gone on a honeymoon. I got to know them and love them better.

When I reached the top there was almost none of the usual view, although as Photo 3 shows the view of the mist was pretty exciting in itself.

I met some hikers on the top who asked me the best hike down. That was an interesting question. I told them the road walk had the best views, but there weren't going to be any views for awhile thanks to  the mist and fog. (As it turned out, even when they cleared there was a dull haze which I suspect was at least partly smoke, for the rest of the day.) I suggested they hike down to Twin Lakes so they could hike by Mountain Lake, though after I made the suggestion I wished I had given them a better sense of the options - by pointing out the differences in distance (and time) - so they could make a more informed choice. As it turned out I met them at Mountain Lake (they had come down via Twin Lakes, and I had come down via Little Summit), and they asked me the shortest way back down. I felt a little sheepish for how I had advised them, but I did enjoy the contact with them, and playing the role of guide. I am becoming quite the hikeathon/pilgrimage guide in my fantasy life. Anybody want to come visit and do your own hikeathon?

But you must be totally confused about all these different paths. Okay, there are four of them. Photo 4 shows my hike, (sort of, because I accidentally didn't end the track until I had driven home, and then I tried to edit it not knowing how and ended up cutting off the last two miles or so of my hike - the loop should close there at the bottom, returning to the lower lake (Cascade Lake) where I started. So my hike starts at the lake, and crosses the road and heads up to the top of the mountain, which is the mushy spot where three different turquoise trails converge. I guess I think of there being four paths to the top, but in fact two of them share the same final segment.

My morning hike crossed the road (my afternoon hike down the mountain), then my morning descent headed down the way that I came, but instead of turning to head down via Cold Spring to Cascade Lake I continued straight and visited Little Summit (where three trails seem to almost converge, but actually the trail down to Mountain Lake by Trail doesn't quite touch the road. I am sure I am boring you with these tangled trails but I have to say for someone as directionally and spatially challenged as I am, to whom maps make absolutely no sense, being able to figure out the track and explain it is a major accomplishment and a high. So bear with me (or just skip this part). So, I came down the trail to Mountain Lake, then hiked along Mountain Lake to Twin Lakes and up to the top from Twin Lakes.

Okay so my "many paths up the mountain" turn out to be technically only three. But I remember learning that some cultures have words only for one, two, and many. So maybe I can pretend I belong to such a culture? Which makes me think, making a typically loose association, of when I used to be fascinated by infinity. I especially loved learning that mathematicians had invented different sizes of infinity that corresponded roughly to one infinity, two infinity, and on up to infinitely many infinities. then you could have one infinite infinity, two infinite infinities, up to infinitely many infinite infinities. It could and did go on forever.

I loved math as a girl because it seemed playful and free, but also really predictable. There was a definite right and wrong, and you could prove things, one way or the other, and people had to agree with you. Not all that "many paths up the mountain" sort of vagueness that demanded that you imagine other peoples' feelings and points of view. I wasn't any good at that, and at that age I really thought the world should be rotating around me - which it decidedly didn't.

But back to my hike. After reaching the top a second time, I headed down the road, though I made a detour to Mountain Lake when my iphone got down to 4% and I discovered that I brought my charger but no cable. I asked people parked at a viewpoint if I could borrow theirs, and can you believe it, two carloads of people were driving around without a charging cable in their cars. I could not believe it. Talk about the world not rotating around me.

So I took a detour to Mountain Lake hoping that someone at the campground there would be properly equipped and able to loan me a charging cable. The road goes pretty close to Mountain lake, but there's a place where the trail I took earlier (when coming down from the mountain the first time) comes near the road, and its a shorter route to the lake, so I took it, hoping my 4% would last and my tracking app wouldn't be interrupted.

I was trying desperately to save my track (which would be lost if my phone died), not knowing that I would later delete a good part of it by accident anyway. On my way down the trail I revisited my favorite moment on the trail today - a fallen moss covered tree where a group of girls were playing. They told me they were creating a hotel. There they were playing together, just barely beyond (but beyond) the immediate scrutiny and supervision of adults, the way I and my siblings used to play as children. Playing creatively and cooperatively and in close communion with the natural world. I asked if I could take their picture and they insisted on posing, but I snapped one spontaneously while they were composing their pose, and I liked it much better. Here are the girls of Hotel Mossy Tree in photo 5.

Adding pleasure to pleasure, when I came down off the trail to Mountain Lake the second time, the woman whose charging cable I was able to borrow turned out to be the mother of two of those girls. I learned that the group camp site was filled with families whose children attended the same elementary school (yes, public!) in Seattle. I realized I had run into the same group yesterday at Twin lake when I had seem multiple families of young children (and some grandparents as well as parents) fishing together all around the lake. You should have seen me smiling. No one of course could see me smiling because of my breathing mask, but I was smiling all the same.

I fell in love with Mountain Lake all over again today. As I mentioned earlier, yesterday's focus on water ways really made me more appreciative of each of the lakes and creeks. Photo 6 is a nursery log afloat in Mountain lake that entranced me.

Near the end of the hike (the part that is missing from the track, when I left the road at the parking lot for Cascade Falls, and followed the trail that meets the upper Cascade Lake loop trail and leads back to where I started), I felt so lucky to be still hiking after 4pm in the afternoon and seeing some of the late slanted light that I so love. I was also enjoying the sense of late summer and early autumn. Photos 7 and 8 show the fall ritual of releasing seeds into the air (which of course made me think of releasing the Angel balloons) and the tall foxglove stalks all withered and dried.

I kept being moved by green leaves on the trees and the way the late afternoon sun was shining through them. I so wanted to get a photo that would help you to feel what I felt when I came over a rise and they first came into view. The moment after I took photo 9 a leaf fluttered to the ground and a few steps later, two more. I thought "duh, River. Late afternoon light. Late summer, early fall. Green leaves that will soon wither and die."

Here Chris and I are, 70 and 87 (I with parents who died, taking the averages of their ages at death, at 84; Chris with parents who died at the average age of 99.5 - by that not at all accurate forecast we are within 12 to 14 years of our deaths, something we are keenly aware of as we consider adopting kittens who might live 16 or more years and realize we need to provide a prospective adoptive home for them should we die or become unable to care for them). Late afternoon in our lives, late summer and early fall. Light shining through the green leaves that have not very long to go before they wither and fall. The heightened sense of beauty and value that comes with transience (as Freud pointed out so eloquently in his essay on transience that Chris and I read every year on his birthday).

I have loved writing this and as always feel very blessed and lucky to be able to reflect on and share my experiences walking through this beautiful world of ours. I am aware that these entries have been a bit more chaotic than in the past. I am having more difficulty composing them, and I suspect that the bang to the forehead I received when I fell down in Sicily may have further compromised my already limited integrative thinking abilities. Chaos notwithstanding, revisiting this beautiful walk with all its happy moments and contemplations and meetings, has been a great blessing. And this gives me a chance to once again quote Angel reminding me "River, it doesn't have to be perfect."

Our friend Cheryl mailed me this quote from Jung today, which seems very related to the theme of "many paths up the mountain":

"...we know there is no human foresight or wisdom that can prescribe direction to our life, except for small stretches of the way...Fate confronts [us] like an intricate labyrinth, all too rich in possibilities, and yet of these many possibilities only one is [our] own right way."     C G Jung

I do think that part of my own way is being able to laugh at and love myself with all my imperfections - and writing these blogs truly helps me to do so. One more small association to paths up the mountain. A favorite cartoon from my - shall I say late girlhood or early adulthood?- lets say right on the cusp between them - was an old Pogo cartoon of two characters climbing a steep mountain. The first three boxes consisted of huffing and puffing and grasping at rocks trying to pull themselves upwards, as well as plenty of expletives aimed at the mountain. Then in the last box, "Now don't go knocking the mountain," says one character to the other, "How'd you like to climb up here without no mountain?"

I loved that cartoon. As if the obstacles and difficulties are the way, that which makes the ascent possible.

Thank you thank you thank you.  Hope to see you on the trail tomorrow. Did I tell you we're going to finish in six days instead of seven? We already have 71 miles, so it shouldn't be hard to finish in two. I'm not sure yet if tomorrow is the day for a bouquet of short hikes gathered from all around our lovely island, or the last Moran Park, which will include Mt. Pickett road, a zig zagging version of Southeast boundary trail revisited, and an excursion across the park boundary to Doe Bay. So I will leave you in suspense, as I myself am.